DISCLAIMER: Not for youth to read. Graphic.
The spring of 1966 at Fort Hood, where I was on duty as the junior aide-camp to the commanding general of the second armored division (MG John E. Kelly, West Point 1936), was a very complicated and emotionally-trying time for me as a young Army lieutenant and graduate of West Point class of 1963. My then wife Jackie devastated me by very strongly indicating she desired I resign from the Army. My first pathway perhaps to deflect this was to transfer from the Corps of Engineers to the less "dangerous" Army Intelligence and Security Agency. Even after accomplishing this, she desired me to resign. I accepted my fate to depart my beloved Army. BG Robert H. Safford desired I accompany him for a tour in Korea as his aide. I knew this course of action meant I could return from Korea in my fifth year of required service and avoid an assignment to the war zone of Vietnam. However, my sense of loyalty to my duty, family tradition and West Point's motto of "Duty Honor Country," prompted me to choose the "Harder Right" rather than the "Easier Wrong." I volunteered for Vietnam without informing Jackie. August 1, 1966 found me departing Love Field Dallas headed for Saigon. My original assignment as an interrogator of Communist Prisoners of War soon changed to become a staff officer in the Fifth Special Forces Group, the Green Berets.
A staff officer I was not to be, as I was assigned to a clandestine intelligence collection unit eventually called Project Gamma with my Detachment B-57 responsible for covert intelligence collection operations in Cambodia. I adopted a fake name and identification as Captain Allen Copley, infantry officer. Fast forward to mid-June 1967, in my 11th month of a 12 month tour. I was at Dak To Green Beret camp in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. A regular army North Vietnamese Communist battalion had crossed the border from Cambodia into our area and ambushed two of our patrols a few miles away. My Saigon-based commanding officer radioed me that he would be flying up to Dak To on Saturday June 17, 1967 to evacuate me from the camp due to the impending attack by the Communists. He arrived at 9:30AM that day as scheduled, but, I had already been medevacked to the Army hospital in Pleiku. At 4:30 AM I had been the American on a tour shift in the camp on my two hour alert duty, when an intense mortar barrage began.
During my actions to have our own mortars return fire and locate the enemy on the hillside to the south of us (eventually resulting in my being honored with the receipt of a Silver Star for Gallantry in Action), one of those rounds hit me to my left rear thrusting me on the ground on my stomach. From here I relate what transpired from the report to me (elaborated upon by me) by Green Beret Combat Medic Jimmy Hill in 2004. "I was in the bunker when I heard someone yelling '...my legs...my legs.' I went up to respond from my underground bunker and, as I started up, a blast knocked me back and a piece of shrapnel lodged in my left shoulder. Soon, I started back up the steps and team member SGT Cramer and combat medic SSG Leslie St. Lawrence brought you into my bunker on a stretcher with you on your stomach. St. Lawrence got to you fast. Your left leg was blown off below the knee and your right leg was broken in five places. You were bleeding to death with both femoral arteries severed and many other wounds. St. Lawrence had no clamps/instruments of any kind with him. He used his fingers to clamp down on the bleeding and hung on that way for a fairly significant time, until help arrived. He did this with incoming mortar fire coming in on both of you. Les was wounded, but not seriously and did not have to be evacuated."
Hill continues in the bunker. "You were alert and oriented, however you were in shock. You kept telling me to help the others outside even though you had traumatic injuries to both your legs. You were going into shock from massive blood loss. Your blood pressure was dropping; veins were collapsing; weak pulse....I started the plasma IV, injected you with morphine in both legs and loosely applied tourniquets in the event the bleeding might start again. At the time you told me your real name and asked me to contact your wife and parents because you "knew" you were going to die. I told you, 'Not today...because you are my first American patient.'" In later conversations with Jimmy, with whom I have remained in contact, I told him had I known I was his first American combat casualty, I would have asked for a second opinion! Jimmy later told me "There was someone else in the bunker that morning!!!!!" I have often reflected as to whether it was an angel?
Sgt. Cramer, also wounded, came by my bed at the hospital and I will always remember his uplifting words, "Captain, what you did under attack, reflects on you as a Special Forces officer." I have never related this conversation publicly, but have kept it close to my heart.
Bottom line, when wounded, I also yelled out "Oh, God, I'm dead." I do not remember any pain after the wounding, never, ever all the way up to when Jimmy shot me with morphine. Do I believe in God and angels? An angel had to have been right there through it all and in the bunker, but perhaps even my God was beside me. The odds do not explain my living except by Divine Intervention! I have gone on to live a rich and fulfilling life, always cognizant of that Day of Miracles on June 17, 1967, three days before my 25th birthday. Yes, I do believe in angels. I had one beside me that fateful morning!
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